


Your Life Will Stretch Before You Like a Golden Path

by Duck_Life



Category: New Mutants (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Child Death, Childhood Trauma, Inferno (Marvel), Limbo, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 09:41:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20172151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Illyana gives herself up to give her younger self a chance. While stuck in Limbo, she watches all her lives unfold in all their awful, wonderful directions.





	Your Life Will Stretch Before You Like a Golden Path

Time doesn’t move in a straight line. For as long as Illyana can remember, it never has. In an instant, she went from age 6 to age 13. In Limbo, once, she slept for a year. She disappeared into a hole in the ground and returned a monster, or a teenager, she’s not sure which. Time doesn’t make sense, and it never has. 

Manhattan was swarming with demons, and Illyana’s mind was only on saving her friends. Saving the city seemed impossible, and saving her soul seemed less than that. But she could protect the New Mutants. 

One moment they were standing in Belasco’s throne room— _ hers _ , now, not Belsco’s or S’ym’s but _ hers _— and the next, Rahne was pulling the others through stepping disc after stepping disc. Illyana’s friends vanished from her. 

And then they returned, with company. 

The moment Illyana saw that little girl she hated her, hated her for stupidly wandering off from the X-Men that day on the island, hated her for surviving when she should have just laid down and died. Her hatred burns like hellfire, but then it subsides. Because she thinks, maybe, she’s got it. 

Maybe she’s figured it all out. 

In the maelstrom, it’s easy to make the switch. That armor has shielded her from harm, protected her in a terrifying and unforgiving world. She slips out of it and tucks the little girl inside. She will give Piotr back his Little Snowflake, and the Darkchilde will fade forever. Illyana gives that little girl back to the world. She saves her friends, and she stops the demon invasion. And she saves the girl. 

Saving her soul was always out of the question, but that’s okay. She has preserved a version of herself, the cleanest and most innocent part of herself. 

What does it matter what happens to the rest of her?

  


Time doesn’t move in a straight line. 

In Limbo, Illyana moves between eras as easily as if she were jumping into puddles. She sees Ororo’s acorn as a sapling, then as a mighty oak, then as a hunk of dead wood on the ground. Through her scrying pools, she learns about the fate of Manhattan, and about the Goblin Queen. A clone of Jean Grey, distorted and destroyed. 

And she relates. Like Madelyne Pryor, she is just a faulty version of the person she is supposed to be. She is something that isn’t supposed to exist. 

Illyana keeps tabs on the little girl she saved. That girl goes back to Russia, and she lives happily ever after, and it was all worth it, in the end. That’s the fairytale Illyana tells herself as she paces across her throne room on cloven hooves. 

In the real version, the little girl gets very sick and dies before she reaches her eighth birthday. 

A hurricane tears through the plains and valleys of Limbo. The mountains shake and shake, like the heaving shoulders of a woman sobbing. 

_ Burdened by demons not of her own making, she remained an angel at heart. _

Illyana hears Storm say that at her funeral, but she never gets a chance to let Ororo know what it meant to her. She is watching from the edge of the woods, shrouded in shadow. 

At night when she can’t sleep, she repeats Ororo’s eulogy like a prayer, some kind of mantra to keep the nightmares at bay. She scribbles it in the margins of her spellbooks. 

  
  


“I remember everything, you know,” Illyana says, and her shoulders are quaking but her voice stays steady even as the tears start rolling down her face. “I remember my whole life. I remember everything _ you _ remember. And I remember that everybody loved that adorable little girl. Piotr Nickoleivich’s little sister. Everybody loved her and nobody was _ afraid _ of her or thought she was a monster. That little girl died twice— once in Limbo and once of the Legacy Virus. She's dead and you buried her and _ I’m _what's left, so. You're just going to have to accept that. Nobody has yet.”

  


This woman is beautiful, radiant, with her hair falling in waves around her angelic face. She is chatting with someone who Illyana can’t make out. At one point she glances up and locks eyes with Illyana— and her expression sours. 

“Just a second,” the older Illyana says, marching away from the table. Her dress streams behind her like a train as she walks. “What are you doing here?” she demands, jabbing a finger at her younger self. 

“I was… I just…” Illyana stammers, still in awe at the person she’s looking at. Her older self, even angry like she is now, looks serene and lovely in a way she herself has never felt. “I don’t know. I was jumping through time and space and—”

“You don’t belong here,” the other Illyana snaps, eyeing her hooves and horns with distaste. “I rejected the Darkchilde persona. I rejected you. I shouldn’t even have to look at you.”

“But…” Illyana scrambles, trying to wrap her head around this. “Your magic?”

“A small price to pay to keep my soul intact,” the woman says. “I get to be normal now. I get to be the best version of myself— of us. And it was worth it.” She sniffs. “Leave me alone, now. Please.”

  


The demon lunges toward her, fangs gnashing and claws clicking and legs skittering, and Illyana throws her hands up in front of her face as if she can shield herself from the monster’s attack. At the last second, a shimmering sword slices through the air and destroys the demon, leaving guts and pus drenching the ground. “That was close,” Illyana’s savior says. The low growl is familiar, and Illyana turns to see yet another version of herself. 

This woman’s red-black scales gleam in the dim light of Limbo. Her horns look ostentatious, like a crown, and her eyes are completely black. 

“Oh, sweetling,” the Darkchilde sighs, taking in the sight of her younger self. “What are you doing here?”

“I… I don’t know,” Illyana admits. “I’ve been sort of lost, ever since Manhattan.”

“N’astirh,” the Darkchilde says. “The babies. I remember.”

“I thought I could put things right,” Illyana says, feeling small and powerless before the impressive demoness. “But I feel like I made everything worse. I thought… I thought I could save myself. But that little girl died and I’m… I feel…” 

“It’s like your soul is torn up, right?” the Darkchilde says, putting one clawed hand beneath Illyana’s chin. “You think your soul is full of holes like an old piece of Swiss cheese, huh, sweetie? Let me tell you, though, it isn’t. Your soul, it’s seen some tough times, but it’s still a thing to behold.”

“It is?” Illyana says, ashamed to hope.

“Oh, yes,” the Darkchilde assures her. “Your soul is still shiny, sweetie. I can see it. It’s wonderful.”

“I… I…” Illyana feels the teardrop snake across her lips. She didn’t even realize she was crying.

“Oh, come here,” the Darkchilde says, pulling the girl into a hug. “You think so little of yourself, sweetie. But your soul… it’s _ beautiful _. It’s almost completely whole, you know. What I wouldn’t give to…” 

Illyana is so caught up in the joy of learning that hope is not lost that she almost ignores the prickle at the back of her neck. Almost.

As it is, she turns her head just in time to see the Darkchilde raising her soulsword, preparing to strike. “No!” she screams, shoving away from her older self. 

“Oh, stop whining, it’ll be over before you know it,” the Darkchilde says, swinging her sword again. Illyana leaps out of the way and keeps backing away. “You aren’t even using it, sweetie, but I _ need _ it. I need that soul.” 

“No,” Illyana yells again, reaching behind her for a weapon, a rock, anything. But how can she defend herself against her own soulsword? The Darkchilde laughs and looms above her, the soulsword bright in her hand. She’s going to do it. She’s going to take what remains of Illyana’s soul. So she calls out the only thing she can think of, the only thing that would get _ her _ to stop. “ _ Snowflake _, please!”

The Darkchilde freezes. “You… do _ not _ call me that. That… that is Piotr’s…” Illyana looks up at her, terrified. The Darkchilde’s eyes widen. Something passes between them. “Go,” the older Illyana says, opening up a stepping disc and pointing. “Get out of here. Get out of here before you become like me.” 

  
  
  
  


Time doesn’t move in a straight line.

Illyana moves miserably, mindlessly, not thinking about where or when she’s going or why she’s going there. She doesn’t belong in any time or realm, so what does it matter? She can’t go home, not with her soul a mangled mottled _ thing _. 

She sees her childhood and her second childhood in flashes. She sees the New Mutants and Lila Cheney. She sees Doug’s death, and Warlock’s, and curses herself for being unable to do anything. Through scrying glasses and stepping discs she watches the X-Men live and die, go to war, fall, rise again. She sees Omega Red and Cassandra Nova and the Shadow King in various states of triumph and despair. 

And suddenly she finds herself standing on the balcony of somebody’s bedroom. The night air rustles the curtains hanging beside her. She realizes with a start that her arrival has awoken someone. 

The blonde woman gets out of bed and approaches her, looking curious and almost amused but not afraid. Not angry at the intrusion. Everything about her is familiar from her choppy bangs to her knobby knees but it _ can’t _ be, she _ can’t _ be, this stranger is older than Illyana ever got a chance to be. 

“I… I’m not supposed to be here,” Illyana says, voice hoarse from disuse. 

The woman tilts her head, considers her, and then she puts a hand along the side of Illyana’s face. “Yes, you are,” she promises. “Not yet, kiddo. But you’ll get here.” Looking over the woman’s shoulder, Illyana can see the sleeping form of another woman in the bed. Candles with burnt wicks cover the dresser and side tables. 

“I’m sorry,” Illyana says, her voice cracking. 

“Shhh.” The woman kisses her on the forehead. “It’s okay.” Unable to help herself, Illyana reaches up and touches the top of the woman’s head, smooths over the sleek blonde hair. The woman almost laughs. “They still come out sometimes,” she admits, eyes flicking up to Illyana’s own horns. “But it’s okay. I’m okay. You’re gonna be okay.” 

Time doesn’t move in a straight line.

For every second chance Illyana gets, she gets another opportunity for everything to go wrong. But that’s okay. 

She’ll make her own chances. And she’ll make sure they count. 


End file.
